Instructions #2: Instructions Upon My Passing

Now that I am dead, there’s something you must do.
Trim your ruby fingernails.
String the crescent tips across the headboard of our bed.
Ignore your lover’s pleas and do not scratch his muscled back.
Take your lips and taste his grief.
Use its bitterness to fill your heart.
Feel my death bind your feet, so I may walk away.

§ 10 Responses to Instructions #2: Instructions Upon My Passing

pause, she whispers: “Read it again”
No longer is it a message from someone else
The words adopt me as my own
I feel it’s me pulling away from that sad, lush scene,
the senses seeing, hearing touching, moving denied one by one
+ walk toward the void that’s been waiting
and the hows of filling the void that’s left behind

Scott said it pretty well. This poem is on the upper bunk at the least. And yes, your feelings speak louder than your rational words (meaning no judgment by that at all). I feel that way a lot reading your poems Pamela. (Actually it is a quality I much appreciate!) Yet there’s also this third… only partly meaning, what more is there yet unsaid or waiting to become?, and I feel this thirst of response after reading too. Like petting the favorite house cat to set all her hair in right-some place. Just a subtle thing. (But usually it just comes out as odd comments like this!) :)

There is closeness and distance and touch (an intimate sense) in so much of what you write, just like this poem here. And resonance… You write good, you do.